In 2020 Chester County wasted $13 million on faulty COVID-19 tests. The number of positive responses was clearly impossible and the County's public health physician resigned in protest. Chester County refused to tell 6,000 of our fellow residents that the test results they were fretting about were likely false. Those in power believed that if they told the truth, it would undermine their administration.
According to Commissioner Moskovitz, 2020 “was a crazy, crazy time.” It certainly was made crazier by the failure of those entrusted with the responsibility to lead our county in times of crisis. Rather than employing basic business practices, such as budgeting to benchmarks and accomplishments, our commissioners handed $13 million to a company which had never done any work like this before.
We do not know if the relationship between that company’s CEO and former commissioners impacted the decision to entrust this important government function to an entirely unqualified company. However, the fact that the present commissioners consider their own decision to have been an abject failure demonstrates that the situation is far worse than we imagined.
The bottom line is that the County prioritized political embarrassment over the well-being of the people they were elected to serve.
Attributing poor decision-making to a "crazy, crazy time" is an easy out when you yourself are culpable. Not telling the truth about it should get you fired. We can make that happen by electing David Sommers and Eric Roe to be our County Commissioners on November 7. They will apply the business practices necessary to ensure good decision-making. And they will never put their own interests above the truth.
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